Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
Investigative journalist Michael Hastings recently broke a story on BuzzFeed about an amendment that is being inserted into the latest defense authorization bill. The amendment would “legalize the use of propaganda on American audiences.” Hasting reported that the amendment would “strike the current ban on domestic dissemination” of propaganda material produced by the State Department and the Pentagon. He says the “tweak” to the bill would “neutralize” two other acts—the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and Foreign Relations Authorization Act in 1987—which were passed in order “to protect U.S. audiences from our own government’s misinformation campaigns.” Rep. Mark Thornberry (R, Texas) and Rep. Adam Smith (D, Washington) are co-sponsors of the bipartisan amendment.
Hastings says that “the new law would give sweeping powers to the State Department and Pentagon to push television, radio, newspaper, and social media onto the U.S. public.” One Pentagon official who is concerned about the amendment told Hastings, “It removes the protection for Americans. It removes oversight from the people who want to put out this information. There are no checks and balances. No one knows if the information is accurate, partially accurate, or entirely false.” The official added that there are “senior public affairs” officers in the Department of Defense who would like to “get rid” of the Smith-Mundt Act “and other restrictions because it prevents information activities designed to prop up unpopular policies—like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
In a Mediaite piece last week, Josh Feldman wrote of how the US military has been looking for new ways to spread U.S. propaganda “on social media websites for a while now.” Feldman also made reference to an article that was published in Wired last July. In the article, Pentagon Wants a Social Media Propaganda Machine, Adam Rawnsley told of how the DoD “has been working on ways to monitor and engage in ‘countermessaging’ on social media sites like Twitter.”
According to Hastings, the Pentagon already spends about $4 billion dollars annually to “sway public opinion.”
Here’s something to chill you to the bone: Hastings reported that USA Today had recently published an article about the DoD having spent “$202 million on information operations in Iraq and Afghanistan last year.” Well, it appears that the reporters who worked on the USA Today article were targeted by “Pentagon contractors, who created fake Facebook pages and Twitter accounts in an attempt to discredit them.” (Read about that story here.)
One of Hastings sources on the Hill told him, “I just don’t want to see something this significant – whatever the pros and cons – go through without anyone noticing.” The source added that the law would allow “U.S. propaganda intended to influence foreign audiences to be used on the domestic population.”
Michael Hastings:
The evaporation of Smith-Mundt and other provisions to safeguard U.S. citizens against government propaganda campaigns is part of a larger trend within the diplomatic and military establishment.
In December, the Pentagon used software to monitor the Twitter debate over Bradley Manning’s pre-trial hearing; another program being developed by the Pentagon would design software to create “sock puppets” on social media outlets; and, last year, General William Caldwell, deployed an information operations team under his command that had been trained in psychological operations to influence visiting American politicians to Kabul.
The upshot, at times, is the Department of Defense using the same tools on U.S. citizens as on a hostile, foreign, population.
Is this how we want our tax dollars being spent—to produce propaganda aimed at us Americans to sway public opinion?
SOURCES
Congressmen Seek To Lift Propaganda Ban (BuzzFeed)
Congress May Reverse Ban On Domestic Distribution Of Propaganda Material (Mediaite)
Pentagon Wants a Social Media Propaganda Machine (Wired)
Misinformation campaign targets USA TODAY reporter, editor (USA Today)
OT:
BREAKING NEWS: Supreme Court Will Hear ACLU Case Challenging Warrantless Wiretapping Law
By Josh Bell, ACLU at 10:16am
http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/breaking-news-supreme-court-will-hear-aclu-case-challenging-warrantless
The Supreme Court has just agreed to consider whether plaintiffs represented by the ACLU have the right to challenge the constitutionality of a controversial law that authorizes the National Security Agency to conduct dragnet surveillance of Americans’ international emails and phone calls.
At issue is an appeals court ruling that allowed the ACLU’s challenge to the law – called the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 – to move forward. Responding to today’s news, ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer said:
The appeals court properly recognized that our clients have a reasonable basis to fear that the government may be monitoring their conversations, even though it has no reason to suspect them of having engaged in any unlawful activities. The constitutionality of the government’s surveillance powers can and should be tested in court. We are hopeful that the Supreme Court will agree.
And ACLU Legal Director Steven R. Shapiro said:
Given the importance of this law, the Supreme Court’s decision to grant review is not surprising. What is disappointing is the Obama administration’s effort to insulate the broadest surveillance program ever enacted by Congress from meaningful judicial review.
The ACLU filed the lawsuit in July 2008 on behalf of a broad group of attorneys and human rights, labor, legal and media organizations whose work requires them to engage in sensitive telephone and email communications with people outside the U.S., including colleagues, clients, sources, foreign officials and victims of human rights abuses. The plaintiffs include Amnesty International USA, Human Rights Watch, The Nation and the Service Employees International Union. The Justice Department claims the plaintiffs should not be able to sue without first showing they have actually been monitored under the program – but it also argues that the government should not be required to disclose if plaintiffs have been monitored.
In March 2011, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejected that Catch-22 logic. The government’s request for reconsideration by the full Second Circuit was rejected in September by a 6-6 vote.
Little is known about how the FISA Amendments Act has been used. In response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the ACLU, the government revealed that every six-month review of the act had identified “compliance incidents,” suggesting either an inability or an unwillingness to properly safeguard Americans’ privacy rights. The government has withheld the details of those “compliance incidents,” however, including statistics relating to abuses of the act.
The act is scheduled to sunset in December. The ACLU is calling for amendments that would limit surveillance to suspected terrorists and criminals, require the government to be more transparent about how the law is being used and place stronger restrictions on the retention and dissemination of information that is collected. (end of article)
Idealist707, there is no such thing as proof. You may not like my arguments, that’s fair, but to insist on proof is an impossible request. If it makes you feel good to consider me a troll, so be it. It certainly seems to be one of the most substantive arguments given so far as to why my point of view is wrong (because I might be a troll) All I can say in reply is, “Boo!”
Dredd,
What is the GOP-run House going to legalize next, water?
================================================
A gallon of water is worth more in the middle east than a gallon of oil. Figure that out.
Dredd 1, May 21, 2012 at 10:34 am
“What is the GOP-run House going to legalize next, water?”
Did you mean “privatize” instead of “legalize”? They’re working on it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/americans-elect-and-the-death-of-the-third-party-movement/2012/05/17/gIQAIzNKXU_blog.html
1zb1,
“what is marketing”
I’m not sure what your point is. That marketing is propaganda? No kidding!
Is there an agenda behind marketing? Is there an agenda behind the spreading/distribution of propaganda? Is the agenda behind marketing and propaganda merely to inform people…or is it to reflect “the views and interests” of the people who produced the marketing campaigns and the propaganda materials? Is the primary motive of the people who produce propaganda about spreading the truth–or about advocating for their doctrine or cause? I’m not implying that people never tell the truth when they are advocating for their causes.
I think it always best to be skeptical of what I hear and read until know more about the groups/people promoting causes. There are lots of organizations, think tanks, and PAC’s today that are funded by billionaires and corporations that spread lots of propaganda and misinformation.
MS, I don’t criticize your integrity. Being critical of some of your views, and defending myself from your crusade, is not at all the same. I have admitted above that I have put myself in a position of being somewhat nasty (that is my only claim to a similarity with Thoreau). I admire Gene H for avoiding that.
BUT, I do NOT criticize your integrity.
Mike S.,
You hit the nail on the head. A romney victory would be a debacle for Social Security and other necessary programs for the 99%. Not to mention the loss of rights for women.
Might loose both houses. We already lost one in 2010 and the chances of getting it back are rather slim. Most predict the Senate at 49-50 democrats. If Elizabeth Warren could win that would improve the chances. Also need McCaskill to hang on. She has some pretty bad tea party opponents. Barking dog, Thornerry was Boehner’s pick for vice chair of the Armed Services Committee. Told y’all we would get a lot of conservative Texans in charge if the republicans took the house. Smith looks to be in AiPac’s pocket.
An example of what we’re in for. This shows a Pentagon/contractor misinformation campaign in the US against reporters writing about Pentagon/contractor propaganda in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those who try to tell us what’s going on find themselves the subject of more of the same. The activity reported here was stopped specifically because it is illegal for the Pentagon to do so. Remove that illegality and, not only will we be given propaganda, those who try to expose it will be subjected to harsh treatment.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2012-04-19/vanden-brook-locker-propaganda/54419654/1
excerpt:
Misinformation campaign targets USA TODAY reporter, editor
By Gregory Korte, USA TODAY
Updated 4/19/2012 8:48 PM
WASHINGTON – A USA TODAY reporter and editor investigating Pentagon propaganda contractors have themselves been subjected to a propaganda campaign of sorts, waged on the Internet through a series of bogus websites.
Sponsored Links
Fake Twitter and Facebook accounts have been created in their names, along with a Wikipedia entry and dozens of message board postings and blog comments. Websites were registered in their names.
The timeline of the activity tracks USA TODAY’s reporting on the military’s “information operations” program, which spent hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan — campaigns that have been criticized even within the Pentagon as ineffective and poorly monitored.
HOW ABOUT A SIMPLE POLL:
Voting for Obama X
Voting for Romney
Voting for Someone Else
Not Voting
Not Eligible to Vote
Eligible but not Registered
i707: the section says:
‘(a) In General- No funds authorized to be appropriated to the Department of State or the Broadcasting Board of Governors shall be used to influence public opinion in the United States.
note the use of the term “NO FUNDS… SHALL BE USED”
MS, your point that we might loose both houses is a good one and I will try to offer an answer when I get a chance but I have to go.
“shall be used to influence public opinion in the United States.”
Is this valid and an operative clause in the new amendment/bill?
If so there is a key word, which can be used to define what the EFF you say to be legal. The word is “influence). If “they” say that was not the intent, then they are home-free, with whatever.
It’s like the torture convention and our reservations, “The law must be intended….”. And that’s what they hide behind. “We are not torturing, we are interrogating.”
As for BB, you did not offer any proof how your and the publics abstention could have a result with a positive outcome. Thus all your talk was for naught.
verbosity does not obscure that you have nothing to come with. Whatever we choose, a “choice” will be made, and an outcome will come. And two roads can not be traveled.
I would prefer to feel I chose my way. Just as Mandelstam did in 1933 by reciting his poem on Stalin as the “peasant killer” with “grub-like finger”. He preferred to die a “death by oppression” than “death by moral starvation”.
You are just trolling I feel, with all due respect. Trollers must serve purposes, although I haven’t figured out which as yet.
BB,
As an extension of what I wrote at 10:39 am, what bothers me so much about your position is not that you refuse to vote for either of the two major candidates, Gene H., and others here have also said that they will refuse to vote for the “lesser4 of two evils” and I accept their view as principled. The difference with you though and with Jill also, is that you see my voting as evidence of my lack of integrity. Gene and the others, however, accept that my choosing my course is also a matter of integrity, by not disparaging my views while merely stating their views.
em: you will notice that propaganda definition includes both benign and sinister uses… btw; what is marketing
1. The systematic propagation of a doctrine or cause or of information reflecting the views and interests of those advocating such a doctrine or cause.
Ok lzb1, you’ve made your point.
bb: you said: “Mostly, they boil down to one thing; Romney would have his hands tied and gridlock in Washington is the best news Main street can hope for. ”
in other words you argue gridlock [nothing getting done] is best. and Romney winning will cause more gridlock then Obama so that is good. now that is not quite the same as “nothing matters”. but it is an argument for “nothing” and the more of nothing we have the better. (but you don’t actually demonstrate how that is so or who benefits and in what way from your idea of nothing
and how is it that a romney divided government is somehow more nothing then the current obama divided government.
bb i stand corrected, what i should have said your whole concept is full of nothing.
“It is uncanny that propaganda is one of the most prolific forms of literature, but is not easily detected by Brits and Americans.”
Dredd,
How true that is especially in your point about all those “news outlets” that are so respected by the “thinking classes”. Given the CIA’s proven capacity to infiltrate their people into major media this bill while potentially noxious really represents nothing new in American propaganda. It is necessary to know about it though, as one more example of how our Constitutional barriers have been breached.
Can we explore the backgrounds of the two Congressmen who are sponsoring this bill? One is named Adam Smith a Democrat from Washington? The other some schmuck from Texas named Mark Thornberry? Is someone making these names up to mock them?
We certainly do not need a Democrat named Adam Smith and the Berry Patch down there in Texas can do a lot better without this thorn it its side.
Whoever is running against these two jerks needs to get some propaganda out.